Goblin Dog

Goblin dogs don’t need a lot of explication—they’re dogs for goblins.  Duh.  So the real question becomes, how else might you use them?  Seeing goblin dogs in the presence of human or other supposedly civilized folk should set off alarm bells for observant PCs.

The Rittenvars are known as an unfriendly and eccentric family who can’t keep a servant longer than a fortnight.  The rare visitors to their manor house find the disagreeable, allergy-prone family to be shockingly poor hosts.  Closer inspection reveals more strangeness: the family hounds are really goblin dogs, and yellow runes are marked along the back passageways.

Ratfolk who openly move among the cities of men often find their dire rat mounts aren’t welcome.  They have taken to breeding hound rats (goblin dogs) as guards and companions, hoping these will be less offensive to their human neighbors.  Unfortunately, while ratfolk and goblins may be immune to the hound rats’ dander, humans aren’t, so the quasi-canines have done little to smooth relations.

A noted collector of rare animals, Professor Wiltshire is determined to enter his goblin dog into the Dowerton Dog Show.  Against the protest of everyone involved, the head judge allows the entry (the by-the-book aasimar noting that mange is an identifying characteristic of the breed).  Naturally, the goblin dog wreaks havoc, the show is a fiasco, and the professor is thrown in the clink overnight for causing a public disturbance.  But with the professor in lockup, there is no one to feed his menagerie at night…and that’s when the real fiasco begins.

—Pathfinder Adventure Path 1 87 & Pathfinder Bestiary 157

Backlog alert: As a very belated Christmas gift, I finished the doppelganger and dracolisk/half-dragon entries.